6 / Death
| Artist / Origin |
Angelo Filomeno (Italian, b. 1963)
Region: Europe
|
|---|---|
| Date |
2007
Period: 1900 CE - 2010 CE
|
| Material |
Embroidery on silk shantung stretched over linen with crystals
Medium: Textiles and Fiber Arts
|
| Dimensions | H: 155 in. (393.7 cm.), W: 90.2 in. (229.1 cm.) |
| Location | Galerie Lelong, New York, NY |
| Credit | © Galerie Lelong and the artist |
expert perspective
| Angelo FilomenoArtist |
My Love Sings When the Flower is Near (The Philosopher and the Woman)
» Angelo Filomeno (Italian, b. 1963)expert perspective
Angelo Filomeno
Artist
“backI am from Italy. My main medium is embroidery and silk. I lost my mother when I was twelve and my father when I was nineteen. I am taking that experience as inspiration of my work. But also my work is not just personal, since death is about everybody, and in any culture and in any part of the world. Always you will see in my work the contradiction of subject matter with the richness of the material. So I want the audience to feel death and that grief, but also to feel a little bit surprised, and to feel a little bit relieved, and to see something that is beautiful. So at the same time you forget what you are seeing, but what you are seeing about death, but you are seeing something more beautiful and precious.
In my skeletons there are some elements—there are natural elements, there are flowers. The skeletons look dead, but they are not dead; they are alive. So I am bringing them to life again. My favorite piece is one of the three pieces that I did for the Venice Biennale. And the title is My Love Sings When the Flower is Near. So it’s really about the love of two persons, which are my parents, and actually she is wearing a kind of flower in her hair. So it’s actually my father saying that to her, ‘My love sings when the flower is near.’ The broomstick represents a memory when I was child that since we had a lot of property and a lot of olive trees so we used the brooms to sweep olives and to make olive oil.”